A Journey Through Africa With ‘The Ones Who Keep Walking’
“Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.”
Yeni Kuti
Time, as people say, is often the best teacher. By glancing through time, we can connect to the past, present, and future to understand the depth of what makes us who we are and who we could be. In Africa, a continent marred by its loss of these connections, a new generation is emerging and utilizing art, music, dance, and photography as mediums to reclaim and reshape its future and for the first time, we get to see this represented in ‘The Ones Who Keep Walking’.
‘The Ones Who Keep Walking’ is a feature-length documentary film that offers a lens into the world of African boundary-pushers, storytellers, and historymakers. Through the visual eye of Melanin Unscripted founder, Amarachi Nwosu alongside a crew of over 200 African creatives, we follow each of their stories as they navigate the ideals of self-expression married with the quest for identity in the face of external and internal barriers. Viewers are taken on a visually captivating journey across countries in Africa including Nigeria, Mozambique, Kenya, Ghana, Ivory Coast, South Africa, Zambia, Ethiopia, Somalia, South Sudan, and Uganda.
“I feel like for a long time as Africans we’ve been under the rug with the influence that we’ve given the world. Now is a time when we’re saying, ‘No, we want to be seen. We want to be heard. And we want the world to know that we’ve connected everybody and everything did come from here.”
Sampa The Great
“The biggest misconception about African youth is that we don’t have enough”
Jomi Bello
‘The Ones Who Keep Walking’ aims to remind the world of the sheer tenacity and pioneering spirit that has always nested within the African continent. While we celebrate young music artists with eclectic sounds taking the world by storm like Ckay, Kamo Mphela, Sampa The Great, Nandele, and TURKANA, we take note of the past legacies that paved the way for African music at the New Afrika Shrine with Yeni Kuti (daughter of Afrobeats pioneer, Fela Kuti). The film also dives into the power of preservation and documentation by exemplifying the stories of legendary photographer, James Barnor, contemporary fashion and documentary photographer, Stephen Tayo, fashion designer Loza Maleombho, creative director and stylist, Gouled Ahmed, London and Addis Ababa-based art gallery, Addis Fine Art, artist, Nana Danso and Jefferson Osei, co-founder of Amsterdam-based streetwear brand, Daily Paper. With commentary from writer, curator, and editor at Bubblegum Club, Lindiwe Mngxitama we see how the spirit of collectivism and unity amongst African youth through communities like Waf Lagos and Urban Pitchaz is forging a formidable path for the continent.
The overriding beauty of the film lies in the fact that though it centres the continent of Africa, its narrative is set in a way that allows different people, from different communities around the world to find inspiration and education. The saying “Africa is now” rings truer everyday, it can no longer be ignored as its youth continue to walk unapologetically in their truth and into a new future.
